Innis & Gunn buys Inveralmond Brewery

Independent Scottish brewer Innis & Gunn has bought The Inveralmond Brewery and plans to transform its Perth brewery into a state-of-the-art brewing and maturation facility.

Dougal Gunn Sharp, founder and masterbrewer at Innis & Gunn.

Innis & Gunn has intended to build an entirely new brewery in south east Scotland. However following its acquisition of Inveralmond it has instead decided to invest funds in developing an existing brewery, that will take the title of The Innis & Gunn Inveralmond Brewery, rather than building one from scratch.

“As we searched for a site for our new brewery, it became clear there was an opportunity to combine the strengths of both businesses and for us to acquire their brewery and brands,” said Dougal Gunn Sharp, founder and masterbrewer at Innis & Gunn.

“Taking over an already fantastic brewery gives us a rolling start in the development of our new state-of-the-art equipment and processes, meaning we can grow much faster than if we started from scratch. It means we’ve avoided a lot of the red tape and planning issues around building a site from the ground up and we can concentrate on what we do best – brewing beer.”

The new brewery will feature a brand new oak barrel maturation warehouse and additional beer tanks will be added to the brewery to facilitate increased production volumes and supply innis & Gunn’s growing number of Beer Kitchen restaurants, already open in Edinburgh and Dundee and soon to arrive in Glasgow.

“The acquisition of Inveralmond gives us the dedicated brewing facility that we need to meet the growing demand for our beers”, added Gunn Sharp. “It gives us a home where we can innovate and experiment with some of the new brewing processes we’ve been dreaming up. This is more than an Innis & Gunn brewery; we’re building a totem for innovation and a launch pad for our continued expansion at home and abroad.”

The Inveralmond brewing team – longstanding friends of Innis & Gunn – will remain unaffected by the acquisition.

Fergus Clark, founder and Managing Director at Inveralmond said: “To me this feels like a real win-win. Our Inveralmond beers will gain access to a sales and distribution infrastructure that will massively accelerate the growth of our beers both at home and Internationally, while at the same time Innis & Gunn gets the brewery they want 18 months earlier than if they had to build it themselves. We are really looking forward to starting to brew Innis & Gunn beers on site and seeing where this exciting stage of our combined development will lead.”

The acquisition and brewery development will be entirely funded by £3.1m in capital raised through the Innis & Gunn’s crowdfunded BeerBond programme.

Innis & Gunn was founded in 2003 and in 2014 reported an annual turnover of £12 million – up from £10.5 million in 2013.